


Anhedonia

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: Indivisible (Video Game)
Genre: Dramedy, Drug Use, F/F, Gen, I am going to forget somebody in the tags but they're all here bby, Monsters, Post-Canon, Rating May Change, Revenge, Self-Harm, Slime, The Future, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Six years after the end of Indivisible, trouble stirs in Tai Krung as surviving ohma addicts band together to bring about a new age of chemical enlightenment.  Their leader, Suchin, has designs on Thorani.  The band's gotta get back together to handle the new threat before it gets wildly out of hand.Contains spoilers for the ending of Indivisible, pretty much inevitably.
Relationships: Ajna & Thorani (Indivisible), Ajna/Razmi
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	1. Asphalt and Ablution

It had been easy living for a few weeks now. Ever since the explosion off in the distance, at the mountain whose name she forgot and did not ever need to know, the people of Tai Krung City were distracted, more than usual, and sweet precious divine Mara had been abundant with ohma, and Suchin's life, which was already flush with blessings, became easier yet.

Suchin slinked away from a drunk passed out at a noodle stand. In her teeth was a purse full of jingle which would buy her the night's ohma and then some. She could make it last. She had gotten very good at stretching out the resin.

Mara's salesman was at his usual place in an alley that had no name, so remote that even in a downpour it would be dry. Which was why Suchin became gently concerned to feel the pavement under her feet and elbows slick with water. It had begun to rain?

Yes, between the explosion and the money and getting here, it had begun to rain like it had never rained before. So it was very important to get her ohma. She threw down her money and the nice man gave her the right number of pills (it was, right? whatever, count later). She crawled away, because he would never let her take the ohma in his presence, and if she killed him, she wouldn't get any more ohma, and that would be bad.

So she found an alley where the only occupant was a pelesit that stared at her for a while before flowing back into its jar and capping itself. It didn't like the smell of her blood. Fine by her.

More ohma for her.

Prepare the ohma. Have to take it. She crawled into a dumpster, nested on a trash bag, and dug her left knife into the lid of the dumpster and swung it closed. She wiped her knife off on her mantle and set about the task of readying the ohma.

Wet it. (Pouring her flask of water into her tin cup.)

Boil it. (Had a lighter. It was running low. There would be more lighters. She counted the minutes until it boiled.)

Strain it onto the knife's curved edge. (Dip the cloth in the boiled water. Squeeze the cloth onto the curve of her knife. Watch the ohmaliquid pool on the blade, not quite syrupy, not wholly liquid; watch it swirl with color even in the dark. It says I am the missing piece of your life and I am bursting to make you complete.)

From there... into the body.

She lay on the trash bags and closed her eyes and she dreamed about the first day of her life.

Wasn't that a precious thing? Was she not blessed above all other takers of ohma? She had memory. A little memory, but memory anyway.

Her life began in an arcade. She couldn't remember which; who could remember that sort of thing? All that mattered is she was at an arcade, playing pinball, when the nice man came up to her with a little resin pill, asking her if she had a little bit of pocket money. She did. He told her to go outside and smoke it and come back in and really, really enjoy the pinball, and she decided to do so. She sat outside in the cold streets, popped the resin in her pipe, and with some time and effort got it smoking. It made soft cracking noises, the resin, that is, and breathed deep. Bitter hot smoke filled her lungs and she coughed up a wad of phlegm, spitting it into a drain and hoping it would splat right onto a hungry ghost, and the ohma hit her brain and her life began.

She stared at dynamos grinding away endlessly and it was beautiful. She watched the lecktrick signs crackle away and it was beautiful. She stared at neon signs and felt like they were saying something important, something she needed to read, and it was beautiful, though the words slid down her eyes like drops of rain.

She didn't feel any pain. [She didn't feel any pain at all.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQrkuO0k6qs)

She didn't play more pinball after that. She went through some things that didn't matter and, a few days later, she went back to the arcade, or maybe just a random one, and she threw down some more money and asked for more ohma, and her prayers were answered.

Suchin let go of her job and she let go of her stuff (minus a few knives and spoons) and she let go of her apartment. Who needed it? The streets were home. There were her people there, the other tasters of ohma, the children of ohma. They traveled in packs for safety. They sniffed out money where it could be found; they kept the hungry ghosts at bay, except the hungry ghosts that were happy to follow them along for whatever reason a hungry ghost follows anyone. They clung together and they bought ohma together and sometimes you had to cut your share of the ohma away from your brothers and sisters, but that's life, you know?

At some point, smoking the ohma stopped working, so she turned to snorting. Then snorting didn't work, so she turned to the blade. It was good that way. It was hard and fast and it stayed a long time. And she hardly spent any time at all without the warmth of ohma, nowadays; she was safe from the world.

This is a good life. This is a happy life.

She awoke to the drumming of rain on the lid of the dumpster, stealing her from her dream, and her hand clenched tight around her knives. The lid flopped open, and a garbage man looked in on her. "Ah, shit!" he said, falling back. "Get one of the guards, we got one'a them bandits in here!"

"The knifey bandits?" another garbageman said from the wet and uncaring abyss outside. "You hear they got Antonio the other day?"

"No shit?!" the first one said. "That dude from... where was it called?"

Their voices were an intrusion on her peace. The ohma was not done with her, but it could not thrive in the intrusion. So she brought her blades to bear and swung out of the garbage bin.

The men stumbled back; the first one tripped over his own boots and fell on his ass in a puddle. She crept closer, tensed the long, lean muscles in her legs, and sprung at him like a grasshopper.

If a grasshopper ended in blades, at least. The distance between them vanished and an arrow entered her clavicle, corkscrewing through her chest 'til it lodged somewhere in her ribs. The force of it arrested her movement and she fell to the ground just shy of the garbageman, breathless and in shock.

No pain, of course. She dropped her right knife--she had to fling it at the ground, and it took a thin layer of skin with it--and started to work the arrow out of herself. She yanked up and out, feeling the arrowhead detach somewhere next to her lungs; she was still working on it when the woman who shot her had closed the distance and brought an axe down on her.

The woman was not very old; she was young, maybe as young as Suchin had been when she was born. She was shorter than Suchin, thick-thighed, fierce-eyed, and in a barrage of strikes she layed Suchin out with axe and spear and bow and sent her skidding along the ground, half-arrowed and decidedly annoyed.

She grabbed her thrown knife before she impacted the far wall of the alley; the force of it forced the breath from her lungs. Her arrowhead-poked lungs. Damn this woman!

The woman stood her ground between Suchin and the garbagemen. "You gonna get back up, lady?" she said; in a flash of red light like a neon sign, she exchanged her spear for a bow, arrow nocked and aimed at her. "Or you gonna leave us alone and take a nice nap somewhere?"

Suchin twisted her head and grabbed the arrow in her teeth. With a few sharp tugs she ripped it out of her chest and spat it at the ground. She answered the woman with a hateful shriek. The ohma had pieced her back together already; was it not good to her? Was it not good? The audacity.

"They never take the nap," the woman said. "Get outta here, guys, I got this." Three lights flicked from her forehead and resolved into people. Suchin hardly cared. The pelesit had scuttled over, smelling blood it liked, and so she had a little help. She scuttled forward, sizing up her new prey.

Man in yellow, longbow pointed at the ground as he sized up his targets. No.

Short, wide man with a shining turban, hands on his hips, a broad smile under his bushy mustache. Too confident.

Tall woman, blue-black hair in gathered bunches, not quite sweeping the ground. Eyes like a (mother) thing she couldn't quite remember. No weapons. Stroking her hair. Nervous? Yes.

Good.

She crawled around the group while the pelesit made its first move, scuttling over to rain bites on the short man, who grabbed a handle on his turban and lashed the turban out into a shining ribbon of a blade. The first woman joined in, bringing her axe to bear on its potion-bottle shell, and the tall woman was vulnerable--

Suchin leaped, killing leg-muscles propelling her through the air, and her murderous blade-stroke impacted a solid wall of water, her blade sliding along a potent field of iddhi. The woman bent under her with the grace of a reed, the water-wall bending with her, and Suchin flew over her, trickles of water splashing her skin, scalding like acid where it touched.

She landed on her shoulder; the man with the bow fired clusters of arrows into her midsection, the ghost of pain blooming where he struck, and the woman was behind her, sidling up for a strike. Suchin swung her knife at the bowman, who rolled to the side like an acrobat, and without losing momentum she flung her knife all the way around and at the water-woman. She took her hair in hand and grasped the first bunch and squeezed and a ball of water spat out of the fish-tail split of her enormous ponytail, impacting Suchin in the chest.

Arrows she had no concern for. Axe and spear she could ignore.

The water of this woman's hair was worse than fire. It was fryer-grease, sticking and boiling and scalding; it was molten metal, charring and melting; it was forcing the ohma out of her body, it was taking away the absence of pain, and so it was so, so much worse than death.

The arrows fell out of her, leaving flawless skin behind; even the arrowhead popped out between ribs, leaving awful, clear, clean sensation behind. Nothing was numb. Nothing was distant.

Everything was immediate and present.

She scrambled away, the filth and grit of the alley like barbs in her skin. The woman fired off more water at her; she veered, juking like a cockroach, leaping back into the dumpster for cover.

The tin can tipped over and she spilled half the remaining ohma. She whimpered, battling against the un-numbness, the uneven, sharp lip of the can biting her wrist. Too much, too much, it's all too damn much... she sopped her rag, she held it out over her blade...

The lid opened. She squeezed the blade.

"Please," the devilwoman said. "You don't have to do this."

Suchin hooked her knife into the meat of her bicep.

"I know it takes the pain away. But the more you take it, the more of your life you burn doing nothing. Please... you're stabbing yourself in a garbage can. Is that a life you--"

The ohma had many gifts. The new muscles and tendons in her legs were one of them. They looped from her hips to her knees to her ankles, and when they untensed, she sprung like a toy.

She smashed into the devilwoman with a pleasant, bony crack. They sailed past her friends and slipped along the ground, the path eased by the endless water in the devilwoman's thick locks.

The puddle of water grew under them as Suchin brought the butt of her knife on the devilwoman's face. She was a wriggler, but Suchin was mighty, and her blade sang. The devilwoman's blood mingled with the pool of water, and..

A serene expression crossed the devilwoman's face, and the water began to glow. Iddhi emanated from the pool, bursting from the wounds Suchin had inflicted and sealing them, and from there piercing Suchin's skin and swimming through her veins, vanishing the ohma, stealing her from cosmic reverie and into the awfulness of unfiltered living.

Suchin shrieked and ran, knives in hand, the blessed numbness falling away once more. It was all too much, all too much--

* * *

Ajna flicked the bottlebug into the air, and Zebei fired a bundle of arrows directly into the bottle, shattering it. The liquid rained over them.

"Hot damn!" Ajna said, returning her spear to her brain. "Good fight, everybody. We're getting the hang of these... guys. Oh, shit!"

"I was wondering when you'd notice Thorani's absence," Tungar said, already hiking over to Thorani as she climbed into a seated position against the far wall.

"Well... I was busy!" Ajna said, outpacing him easily and sliding into place at Thorani's side. "Are you alright? Did the druggie get you?"

"A little," Thorani said, stroking her face. "But it takes more than that to put a deva down for good, my little luksao."

Tungar came to a stop well away from Ajna and Thorani. "Hoo! It seems I still need to work on... what's it called again?"

"Cardio," Zebei said, crossing his arms. "Maybe eat a little more of those vegetables Nuna's starting to grow."

"These sound like dark arts, Zebei. I'll have to ask Phoebe..."

"Ugh, I hate those ohma guys," Ajna said, touching one of Thorani's bangs. "They smell bad and they hit way too damn hard. Why's ohma gotta be that way?"

"Poison's in the dose, luksao." Thorani got back to her feet. "Once we get through to Mara, we'll be that much closer to setting things right."

"Yeah," Ajna said. "Alright, guys. Back to patrollin'."

* * *

Suchin fled as long as her body could hold out, crashing at last in the storm sewers below a dark bar. The bar had draw her eye as she fled; it was a gap in the lights, the only thing in Tai Krung that seemed dead, and as she forced herself through the concrete slit leading to the storm drain she felt a kinship with the dead place.

She let the street water carry her down to the sluice gate; she dug her blades into the sides of the drain and pulled herself onto the worker's walkway, below snapping, sparking lights. She found a medkit mounted onto the walls and ripped it clean off its mount. She cracked it open, looking for medicine, and finding only a bottle of analgesic and a single syrette of plain, mundane morphine. It'd have to do.

She injected herself and gulped down as many aspirin pills as she could tap out of the jar. Opium high was nothing compared to ohma high. There was comfortable numbness, but no joy, and the numbness was itself undercut by the sick riot the drug made in her stomach. She fumbled open an emergency blanket, found a corner under a radiator vent that felt warm, and cocooned herself and tried to sleep.

A little misery was just part of life. After all, ohma wore off from time to time, and she could survive the moments where it was not within her, where it had departed for richer veins and less-changed bodies. This was just a day where the ohma was a little less forthcoming, where some devilwoman had developed a watery method of stealing joy from her life. Someone would kill her, as they would kill the woman she hid inside, and that would be it.

She just had to make it through tonight.

She just had to sleep and make it through a dream.

She did not sleep, though she pretended to; and in the morning, she found more of her brothers and sisters and prowled the streets for money and drugs.

For a day more, she could pretend all was right.

* * *

Mara died the next night. There was no ohma to buy. There was, so it was said, a changing of the guard. Garuda Cruel ruled Tai Krung City now, and his name was amply earned. The price of ohma skyrocketed. Once she only occasionally had to betray an ally, one little knife-trick here, one nudge into exposed wires here; now it was life or death and she rarely had the chance to just lie down and let the ohma be good to her.

Some days she could not afford ohma and life was misery.

Those that survived, as she did, changed. The thinness of ohma, the potency of it, made them stronger. Perhaps Garuda Cruel meant well. Perhaps he wanted them to be mightier; fewer children of ohma, greater power within them. Suchin would never forgive him for his mercy, if he intended mercy at all.

This twilit existence only lasted a few weeks. Hardly even a month. She didn't reckon time very well, but this was how much time passed, and at the end of it, Garuda Cruel was dead, and a rain fell that burned the ohma out of its children.

She was on the street when it was happening. She was biting into a skewer of roast chicken--maybe it was chicken--taken from a sidewalk vendor who valued an intact neck than he did all of his wares. She choked down the charred flesh and felt the first drop of poison rain splash against the back of her hand. She dropped her meal, seized her knife, and as the deathrain increased in volume she fled, perhaps unwisely, back into the storm drains.

She crawled as deep as she could, clinging to walls, to ceilings, barreling through walkways, finding the deepest, driest place she could, where monsters congregated and gave her wide berth.

Perhaps they knew she was a child of ohma and to be spared. Perhaps they saw the potency of her arms and legs.

But she waited there for a long, long time, until the ohma was out of her. And Suchin crawled out of that dark, though it took long days in the underground, and emerged to find a world where there was no ohma.

Garuda was dead. The devilwoman had purged the world of all light and love. Her bre'ren and sis'tren were gone; dying, returning to their old lives, snapped back up in the jaws of mere existence.

Suchin was one of three ohmablessed who found the Sea of Milk. She smelled the ohma growing at its banks and chewed the leaves for the bitter, weak ascension it gave. It was enough to think.

Think.

Thought was pain. But thought was her last refuge; a last, desperate hope. She could be numb. She could be happy. But to get there, she had to think.

Alone (but for two at her side whom she barely realized were there), desperate (but with all the ohma in the world to her name; all that she dared to retrieve, though her arms and legs were growing weak, her hands shaky), and afraid (yes, terrified, at all times), she sought a way to go back to those days where everything was right.

It was a long time coming... but she found it.

* * *

Six years later.

* * *

This part of the storm drain system hadn't seen water in years. Maybe longer. Decades, jeez, how do you figure that happened? But it was so obscure and out of the way that nature had started to reclaim the concrete floor. With a little elbow grease to reinforce things, this stuff could live here a thousand years and never be missed.

I mean, without also leaking into groundwater and... something. Tanet had seen the pictures of what happened a little over half a decade ago, and desperately did not want to see the same thing happen to Tai Krung City. Still, he took the job, and the stuff had to be good and far away from the Iron Kingdom for both its and the kingdom's safety.

Yeah, this garbage would go undisturbed for a thousand years, easy. If it got found out in a cool thou? Wel, by then it should've calmed down a little.  
It took a month to prepare the storage hole for long-term storage--shoring up the walls with filtering stone and silt and steel-reinforced concrete. Then it took a long, fastidiously slow week to get all the drums down here, barrel by barrel. But there were only two left, one that Tanet and Ukrit were delivering themselves.

Tanet yawned so hard his jaw popped; he really wished he hadn't, because the smell of this place was something else entirely. "Guh. Man, I am so-ass glad that today's my last day on the job."

"Really, man?" Ukrit said, nudging the last barrel into place. "You've been aces at this job. All six years we been side by side, ain't never seen a man better at his job than you. Hell, lookitcha! You went from a garbage man to a... wasname..."

"Toxic wase disposal expert," Tanet said, tapping the metal drum. "But I was thinking, like, the dregs of those super-hot chille sauces that'll burn your skin off if you touch it? The sort of thing the hungry ghosts won't touch. This Iron Kingdom stuff, I don't like it." He gently kicked the drum near the base, where it was sturdiest. He had to express his disdain safely, after all. "I mean, hungry ghosts won't eat this either. But man, I don't know if anything would wanna eat this no matter how evil and dead it was. So, you know? That's a good note to go out on, taming the... this-stuff. Maybe I'll come out of retirement for one last job or some shit like that. But for now? I'm gonna wash my hands, and probably the rest of me 'cause it's been a long and hard-workin' day, then order out for curry, and call it a career."

"Well," Ukrit said, "I'm gonna be sad to see you go."

"Heh, don't be too sad. I'm gonna nominate you as my replacement."

Ukrit lit up. "Really?!"

"You ain't seen nobody better than me, and I ain't seen nobody better than you. We're the best in the biz, and if it's losin' me, then it ain't gonna be losing..." He leaned to the side, peering into the room. "What the hell is that?"

There wasn't much in the way of lighting--because this place was a long-term storage for toxic waste, you see--but their work lights cast a sharp glow on the front ranks of toxic waste drums. Row and row and row passed into the darkness, and at the middle of the room, coming closer, was someone crawling along the tops of the barrels, muttering something.

"Hey!" Tanet said, waving. "Watch those drums! They're full of evil slime!"

"...really, 'evil slime?'" Ukrit said.

"That's what it literally says on the itinerary, Ukie," Tanet said. "Hey! Seriously, watch it with the--"

The figure was long, lanky, human-like, but their skin was pale as a frog's belly and shiny as such to boot. Their arms were too long, legs too long, and their head concealed by a tattered, maroon-stained cloak. And in their hand was a scythelike knife, in the fashion of those ohma junkies from... six years ago.

The junkie pierced the lid and, with a grunt, began to cut it open.

"This place locks from the outside, right?" Ukrit said.

"Yeah, but... how'd she get in here?" Tanet said.

"Not our problem."

"It is _absolutely_ our problem! How the hell did--"

A pair of ohma junkies swung down from the ceiling and kidnapped the hell out of the two men.

"Ah, come the hell on!" Ukrit said.

"You better not ruin my flawless record of--" Tanet said, unable to finish his rant as the junkies dragged them away.

Suchin stabbed her blade into the lid and yanked it away. A grim chemical scent rose from the drum.

It was filled to the brim with a dense pink liquid. She tapped it with the butt of her knife; the surface was springy. With some effort she cut away at it with her knife, struggling to pierce the skin. Beneath it was a fluid layer, thick as glue.

It had been months since the last time she'd spoken. Her voice was slow, rasping. "You," she said. "Come out of there. I've been waiting."

A probing member slid out of the slime. It was made of black jelly; bands of bright colors pulsed within, bright and strobing like neon.

Bright. Meaningful.

"You called me here," she said. "In dreams. It's been so long since I dreamed. What do you have to tell me?"

It said nothing, but it reached a second member out of the slime; a third. She took them in hand and pulled it free.

The thing was something between a grub and an octopus. Its body was ovoid, pulsing and twitching; its four tentacles burned and pulsed with light. Something like a head swiveled and angled at her.

She pressed her head against its.

It had no need to speak with words. It spoke in her memories.

The devilwoman had taken her life away. The devilwoman had taken the ohma away. The devilwoman had seen to the end of Mara and Garuda Cruel.

The devilwoman is a deva. Mara _was_ a deva.

"...you can fix her," Suchin said.

The worm-squid writhed pleasantly in her hands. It was warm and slippery.

"You _will_ fix her."


	2. The Drawing of the Twenty-Five

One year after their victory over Kala, the Incarnations had reunited in Port Merifa to celebrate the wellness of the world and the memory of Ajna and Dhar. At the end of the third night of revels, those sober enough to function discussed when they would meet again. It was agreed--and confirmed once they deciphered the handwriting on the "soshal contract" the next morning--that it would be an annual meeting.

It would not just be a reunion, not just a time to touch base with old friends, but to compare notes and plan for the future--places where they could use their unique gifts to better the world, prepare for impending threats, and generally fill time with things that weren't food and drink so they would not repeat the legendary bender and equally-legendary week-long hangover of that first reunion.

The sixth anniversary was nigh, and the gathering begun.

The reunion's formal name...

...had not yet been agreed upon. Maybe they'd get around to the vote this year.

* * *

Baozhai lay in her bed, eyes closed, contemplating the slow movement of the sea beneath Teotl, as she had been for several hours to no avail. So she decided to stop pretending. She washed up, took a shot of her good whiskey with a shot of her bad whiskey to wash it down, dressed up, and stood a long time outside of her cabin.

Thorani's cabin was next to hers. She was first mate, after all. Honorary first mate, technically, since she did a lot of traveling to heal and give succor to the needy, but the Teotl was her chariot to anywhere in Loka, and she was a deva, so screw you, anybody who wants to say anything about that.

Besides, Baozhai sunk a lot of cash into hiring a master craftsman to create a hammock with the comfort of a bed and such stability even on the roughest seas that Thorani could rest as surely as on dry land.

Because... she was a very good first mate... honorary.

Yeah, she thought. Let's get abovedeck.

First, though. A little more whiskey.

* * *

The sun was not yet over the horizon when Leilani started her farewells. Most of them were whispers to the crew as they slept, or transcribed in a long and rambling note for the other Incarnations left tucked into Baozhi's cubbyhole... mailbox. Pardon, the queen of pirates does not have a cubbyhole, she has a mailbox, or at least that's what Baozhi kept telling her. Eh, whatever! She left the note there, that's all that mattered, and she headed to the bridge where to her great surprise she saw Baozhi standing at the prow, looking out over the inky pre-dawn sea. A fine line of red burned on the horizon.

"Good morning," Baozhai said, still looking out at sea. "Not even staying for breakfast? The crew's gonna be real mad you didn't make something for 'em."

"Oh, I totally did!" Leilani said, with a little jump for emphasis. Her sword bounced on her hip. "I made so much poi you could drown in it if you're not careful."

"You spoil us. Still... we're gonna miss you at the get-together. This thing you have going on can't wait, huh?" She turned around at last, wearing a smirk that looked a little less sure than usual.

"Afraid it can't," Leilani said. She pat her sword. "My 'aumakua said it's time to go west."

"Like... forever?" The smirk faded, just a little.

"Oh! Oh, right, not forever. Just heading back for a minute for a, what's it called, a rite of passage... thingey."

Baozhai tromped across the boat and put a hand on Leilani's shoulder. "Lady like you doesn't need to prove anything to any gods or spirits I could care to name. But if it's important to you and your grandma's spirit, go with the blessing of the queen of all pirates. Smooth sailing, alright? 'Least you'll be sailing away from the storm."

Leilani turned the shoulder-touch into a powerful hug. She was a head shorter than Baozhai, but much like with beetles, it was the smaller set of pincers that had the most force behind them. Or maybe she just didn't know how to control her strength like Phoebe could.

"Hrrk. That's good. You can let go now." Baozhai struggled for breath. "If you... squeeze... tighter... you'll set off... my blasting... caps..."

Leilani loosened her grip, sniffling a bit. "I know... like that one time. I'm just--I'm really nervous about the trip, you know?"

"You sailed here with a school of fish last time," Baozhai said. "You can make it on your own with a... are you going to be taking one of the lifeboats, or are we waiting for a ship, or...?"

"My 'aumakua's taking me!" Leilani said.

"Nice. Nice..." Baozhai looked around, seeing only a skeleton crew of night owls maintaining the Teotl's course. "Say. Do you have time to talk something over before you go?"

"I think I do," Leilani said, letting go at last (to the relief of Baozhai's ribcage) and stepping over to the starboard edge. "What is it you wanna talk about?"

"Well..." Baozhai cleared her throat. She took a sip of grog from her hip flask. She cracked her knuckles, popped her shoulders, rolled her neck around...

"Should I be watching?" Leilani said. "Are you testing out a new warmup routine?"

"No..." Baozhai said. "It's more..." She let out a huff. "Okay. So you know me and Thorani are..."

"Lesbians?" Leilani said.

"Besides that."

"Best friends?"

"Yeah, we're that too, but..."

"Crewmates?"

"You're just gonna keep guessing 'til I say something, aren't I?"

"Did you win the lottery?" Leilani said. She gasped. "Is she having a baby?! Are _you_ having a baby? Where'd the baby come from?!!"

"I wanna ask her to marry me but I'm scared shitless of what'll happen next _holy mother of fuck please stop talking_ ," Baozhai said, blushing furiously. "You have any white-hot island tips for me, kid?"

"I'm twenty-four..." Leilani said.

"Yeah, and you're going on a womanhood test or something, and you've been hovering at 'second mate' for a while, so clearly you still have a little learning to do, spratling."

"Oh! Yeah, I totally... am." Leilani considered her next words carefully. "Wait, if I'm not a grownup yet, why are you asking me for... wedding tips?"

"Proposal tips... and... well... because you're awake and we're alone." Baozhai took another sip of grog, then just downed the entire flask. She capped it, stuck it down a pocket, then fetched a second, larger flask which was just rum. She took a nice long draft from it. "Ah, hell. If it were Phoebe up here instead, maybe I'd have better luck. But it's just you and me, so that's just how it's going down." She offered Leilani the flask; Leilani took it and enjoyed a quick nip. "So, Leilani. You have any tips?"

"You love her with all your heart, right?" Leilani said.

"Yeah," Baozhai said, adjusting her footing.

"So..." Leilani cradled the flask like a lover's head. "You go up to her and you say: 'Thorani, I love you with all my heart. Will you marry me? ... and rule the seas as two queens?'" She spoke in a falsetto, not even close to Thorani's voice: "'Oh, Baozhai! Your tender lips and one eye have seduced me into matrimony!'" She planted a mushy kiss on the outer curve of the flask. And took one more drink.

"...that easy, huh," Baozhai muttered.

"It could be!" Leilani said, tripping over her own feet as she tried to toss Baozhai the flask. They only spilled a little. "Anyway... I think I hear my ride coming!"

A dolphin breached the calm sea, chittering delightedly as it reached the height of the bridge. It flapped its flippers and said, "Hello, Leilani! It is I, your wonderful visiting spirit guide--"

A shark big enough to comfortably fit the dolphin in its mouth like a plantain burst from the sea and fit the dolphin in its mouth like a plantain before biting down in a shower of dolphin blood and sea foam that rained over Leilani and Baozhai. It crashed back into the sea, the wake of its landing rocking Teotl.

"Holy shit," Baozhai said, impressed.

"Hi, grandma!" Leilani said, waving.

The shark beached itself against Teotl's armored side. Deathless black eyes glared down at the women on the deck.

Baozhai waved.

Leilani leaped into the air, spun around 1080 degrees, and landed on the shark's snout. "Keep safe, Baozhai! Have a ton of fun! Tell everybody I love 'em!" The shark stood on its tail, leaped over the Teotl, and landed with an even larger splash on the port side, swimming away into the crimson sunrise.

"Hahahaaa!" Leilani shouted, her cheerful bell of a voice ringing, " _I-I-I-'m so-o-o-o co-o-o-o-_ ggglblblb!" It lost a little something when the shark went below the waves.

"Godspeed, you precious dumbass," Baozhai said, taking a sip.

Qadira peeked through the door leading from belowdecks to the deck. "What was that?" she said. "Are we under attack?"

"Nah," Baozhai said, gesturing vaguely. "Just... shark stuff. Go back to bed."

Qadira laughed, maybe a little nervously. "The anniversary's off to a memorable start, isn't it."

* * *

Ginseng awoke to the sun playing across their face. They yawned, gently rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and sat up in bed. They knocked back their bedside glass of water, freshened up for the day, and stopped only to grab the requisite, tropey slice of toast.

"Have a good day, child!" Coriander said, busy analyzing seeds from a bad harvest.

"Don't bother the wildlife, alright?" Turmeric said, sipping a strong black tea as he browsed the newspaper. "We don't need any more pets."

"Perish the thought!" Ginseng said, turning on their heel just before stepping out the door. They tipped their hat and Honey hopped from the Honey Pot (an actual honeypot that Honey had licked clean on the first day of Honey's occupation of the household and subsequently used for a bed, not that Honey asked anybody's permission or anything) and into Ginseng's hat. "Bye, love you!" They took a bite of toast as they skipped out the door, which they gently kicked closed behind them.

"It's nice they have a hobby," Coriander said.

"Mm. Keeps 'em active, I guess," Turmeric said, turning the page of his newspaper. "That construction thing should be done with today, that's good news."

"Wonderful," Coriander said, glaring at the seeds under the microscope. "Maybe they're leeching metals or construction chemicals into the water table... might explain these damn seeds."

Outside, Ginseng perched one foot on the guard rail separating the porch from a one-story drop and ate their toast. The years since the end of Kala's reign had been good to them; they grew tall, willowy, with good strong legs and a good strong back. Diet, exercise, study, alchemic balance of body chemistry, pitched battles against entropy and chaos, and an ever-increasing command of iddhi had shaped them into the person they had dreamed of becoming so many long and quiet nights since they were a child.

They brushed the crumbs from their hands. "Ready, Honey?" Ginseng said.

Honey, as Honey did twenty-four seven and three-six-five-point-twenty-five, stared down in silence.

Ginseng hopped on the guard rail, leaped to the electric pole nearby, off the pole to the roof, and once on the roof, gathered their iddhi into a shell around them.

Flares of iddhi solidified into a sleek golden breastplate, into protective gloves and elbows and kneepads, a cute owl-themed helmet that left their iddhi-glowing glasses and face uncovered. A dark green bodysuit gave them an aerodynamic profile; a red cape, attached at the neck and wrists, gave the appearance of crimson wings.

They struck a pose. "Owl Rider! Silent wings of justice!" they said, loud enough for everyone on the block to hear.

Wheels of iddhi-flame blazed at their heels.

"Nyoooooom!" Ginseng said as they took off at high speeds through the streets of Tai Krung, ready to meet up with Naga Rider and dispense some justice.

Now, you may be wondering: where the hell did Honey go, and Ginseng's hat?

That you will just have to wait to find out, friends.

Ginseng blazed up the walls of an arcade, wall-jumped off a spitting neon sign and onto a roof. Naga Rider was waiting, looking out over the city. Ginseng came rolling to a stop right next to him. "G'morning!" Ginseng said. "You have your morning tea today, Naga Rider?"

"As always, Owl Rider," Naga Rider said. The light of his eyeholes narrowed. "A storm's rolling in. The air is charged. This city has never shied away from the rain--and doers of evil have never shown a fear of thunder."

"My dear Rider," Ginseng said, "I humbly propose we instill such a fear into them."

"Eyes open, Owl Rider," Naga Rider said, gesturing with his forefingers, "I have yet to find clues to the whereabouts of the missing sanitation workers. I have a hunch, however, as to where we might find one. How about we wrap this question up before our friends arrive?"

"Do I hear a challenge being issued~?"

"Keen-sensed as ever." He struck a pose, chopping his hand at the streets below. "Naga Rider! Owl Rider! Victory and peace!"

"Woo!" Ginseng said, and the two mighty heroes plunged into the underbelly of Tai Krung.

* * *

The afternoon was still young, the air in Ashwat Forest turning from warm to stifling to spite the coming storm. There had been a brief scuffle with a few pretas when the crew had set out in the morning, but there had been no further problems in the hike to Tai Krung. Zebei had just started to relax, to stop scanning the line of every tree and every motion of branches overhead. Then came the worst of it, the nightmare scenario he had been dreading since the night before.

The footpath was clear. The treeline was fading overhead; Altun came into view overhead, a great black shadow lazily drifting through the darkening skies. A chilly gust slipped through the trees, right from the direction of Tai Krung.

Zahra strummed her oud. "I learned a new song the other day," she said. "After escorting that company to Port Merifa, you see, there was a band of travelers from Spectrum..."

Don't, Zebei thought from his place at the back of the marching order. For the sake of my nerves, don't.

"Would you like to learn it?" Zhara said.

"Would I!" Prisha said. The little Asura child had shot up like a bamboo shoot; she was hardly eight years old, but tall enough that she could no longer ride on Lanshi. Her horns contributed to the effect, boosting her height by nearly two feet and branching into antlers. With the antlers she was taller than Zebei. Even without she was taller than Kushi. And among her other traits that made him feel older than necessary, Zhara had been teaching her musical instruments.

Starting with the mbira.

Which Prisha was pulling out right now. And Lanshi, padding alongside her, perked up his ears at the faint whisper of her thumbs along the steel prong-keys.

"Follow me," Zhara said, and she played the opening notes of a song.

"Magnificent," Zebei muttered, not as quietly as he realized when Kushi elbowed him in the hip.

"[O Basilisk, o Cockatrice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTxK_otwEFo)," Zhara sang.

Prisha sang the words back, and Lanshi bayed the notes in turn.

"The prophet was a child of flesh! Stolen from the family creche, and hidden in the wilderness..."

"It's pretty, isn't it?" Kushi whispered.

"It's _morbid_ ," Zebei said.

"You're just too much on edge," Kushi said. "It's been safer now than it's ever been! And it hasn't exactly been dangerous, you know."

"...nnh," Zebei mumbled.

The trio at the front of the march kept their song going.

"...he asked me how I'd rather go,  
To burn in the fire or freeze in the snow.  
Well, I'd rather go painful and alone  
Than be a prophet, turned to stone--"

Zhara ceased playing at once, though Prisha kept strumming a few moments later. In a small clearing where the road became a crossroads, there sat Razmi.

Razmi without Bom was a strange sight. In fact, she wasn't just without her old tiger pelt; Bom himself was nowhere in sight. She was dressed comparatively lightly, with pants in lieu of a voluminous skirt. Her lanterns, old and new, she kept protectively between her sandaled feet. Roti sat on the ground next to her. The years had made Roti longer, but no less round, and no less vacant.

"blep" went Roti as her tongue flicked out of her snoot.

"Roti!" Prisha said, running up to and hugging the tapir. Roti blepped a little harder.

"Hark!" harked Lanshi, wagging his tail hard enough to dislodge a cloud of dog residue.

"Razmi," Zebei said, stepping forward and offering his hand. "Good to see you."

"Hey," Razmi said. "Did you finally invest in a nose sharpener? I bet you could carve ice with that schnoz."

"And good to see you're well, too," Zebei said.

"As well as it gets," Razmi said.

"Where's Bom?" Kushi said, giving Roti a pet along her brow as Prisha rubbed the tapir's belly. "How are we gonna scare that one waitress if Bom's not with us?"

"Oh, I got him a job," Razmi said. "There's this... I think he's a woodcutter? And he's getting on in years, and Bom is Bom. So: a little slashy-slashy, a little scorchy-scorchy, then a little pushy-pushy, boom. Hard part's done."

"If you say so," Zebei said, scanning the bushes and tall grass for signs of Bom ready to hop out and spook them.

"So. Tai Krung, right?" Razmi said. "Cool. Let's move it." With a huff, she picked up her lanterns and stood up, briefly achieving full height before settling into a familiar slouch. "Burnin' daylight. Or not-being-rained-on... time..."

Kushi giggled. "Don't tell me you're scared of getting wet."

"You have a flying monster pet and you're not even a little afraid he's gonna get electrocuted," Razmi said. "Sure. Cool for you."

Zhara plucked her oudstrings. "Now. Where was I?"

"Please don't," Razmi said.

"Did she say 'louder?'" Zhara said.

"I think she did~!" Prisha said.

Zebei and Razmi groaned in unison.

* * *

Little by little, the hour drew nigh.

**Author's Note:**

> While working on my original novel for NaNoWriMo--and a little beyond--I fell in love with Indivisible, really hard, and this story unfolded itself in my head as I reached first the end of Tai Krung's story arc, and then the end of the game proper.
> 
> I don't know how long this story is gonna be, but we'll see if it's one of my patented "eighty thousand words about goo" fics.


End file.
